The Dangers In Making A Subversive Movie In Saudi Arabia

Even when change is long-awaited, it’s not always easy to handle. The Saudi Arabian director Ali Kalthami was born in 1983, the year the country’s cinemas were shut down. Growing up a committed cinephile and guerrilla film-maker, he was on tenterhooks, waiting for the ban to be lifted. But when it finally happened, in 2018, he was daunted. “I felt like the gates of something huge had opened – it was overwhelming,” he says. “It makes you think: am I ready or not?”

The answer, clearly, was yes. The 40-year-old’s debut feature, the Riyadh-set thriller Mandoob, or Night Courier, became the highest-grossing Saudi film in Saudi Arabia last December – confirming that local audiences are hungry for work that focuses the lens on their country. (Only 13% of releases there are Saudi films, but they account for 36% of the box office.) Kalthami channels his anxieties about the whiplash pace of change in the kingdom into his protagonist Fahad, a self-sabotaging food-delivery driver who, emasculated by his inability to pay for his father’s medical care, tries to muscle in on an illegal alcohol ring.

Whereas 2012’s Wadjda, the previous high point for Saudi film, was an emancipatory vision of how the country could be, Mandoob reckons with its growing pains more than a decade on: the cracks in the patriarchy, the atomising effects of hypercapitalism, the cosmopolitanism in multilingual workplaces and Instagrammable restaurants – and those shut out from it.

Kalthami, the son of a defence ministry administrator and a homemaker, felt a duty to chronicle this transformation. “I’m a Riyadh boy all the way. I’ve lived in the area for 40 years and I’ve seen it going through so many phases,” he says on a video call from the city. “And I felt that it’s really important to document the moment now to reflect back on it later. Knocking on doors, Fahad is almost like a kind of journalist for the city.” With his white thawb robe setting off his hipsterish headgear – a turquoise vintage baseball cap from an Indonesian duck farm – Kalthami also comes across as a spokesperson for a new era.

Mandoob’s brand of journalism, though, probes clandestine areas of Saudi life with enough caustic irreverence to make you think it may have caused Kalthami some bother with the religious authorities. Has he ever dialled up illegal hooch himself? “I’m not gonna answer that,” he says, chuckling. “But I did a lot of research.”

Rather than the powers-that-be, though, it was the film industry that took some convincing to back the film. Pitching it to producers at the Red Sea film festival, he felt a certain unease in the room. It may have been the edgy subject matter, although Kalthami says the alcohol prohibition is already widely discussed, including on television. More fundamentally, the film didn’t fit their expectations of the comedy shorts on YouTube for which he was known. Nor did Kalthami’s predilection for destabilising characters and dark comedy (apparently inspired by Adam Sandler’s finer moments) conform to the type of American blockbusters or Egyptian comedies that are the staple diet in Saudi cinemas.

“I’m sorry to brag,” Kalthami says, grinning affably underneath his moustache. “But the important thing that Mandoob has done is telling the producers, the decision-makers, the industry’s economic system that a variety of different people will watch films here – and not just one thing.”

His dispatch from Riyadh’s mean streets fits into a recent spurt of Middle Eastern films that are using noir to pick open the flaws of their societies, including 2022’s Cairo Conspiracy and Holy Spider. But despite the subversiveness, the authorities finally got on board, handing the film a 15 rating and wishing it well. “They said: ‘This is one of the best ever Saudi films and we are very proud of you.’”

With eyes on the untapped but potentially enormous Saudi film industry (already No 1 in the Middle East by cinema admissions), the success of Mandoob has made Kalthami an international ambassador for his country. He is proud of this, but it’s not always a comfortable place to be. An unwelcome part of the job is being called to account by journalists for the Saudi regime and its recent expansion into culture and sports. “I never see British film-makers or ones from other areas of the world get these kinds of political questions,” he says.

As an Al-Nassr fan, Kalthami was delighted to see Cristiano Ronaldo pitch up in Riyadh. He believes there is a double standard in the stringent criticism applied to Saudi “sportswashing” – as if the newcomers don’t have the right to enter the global arena of hypercapitalistic entertainment. “It tells you how the east and the west communicate,” he says. “There’s always a lot of tension between them.”

There have now been almost 50 Saudi films since cinemas reopened. As more emerge, Kalthami thinks this intense scrutiny, putting politics ahead of the artist, will die down. “I think it’s a phase. With more films, with more integration of cultures, it will dissolve. [The Saudi issue] will become old news.”

That will happen only if Saudi cinema moves towards full and enduring freedom of expression for the country’s artists – although Mandoob’s sharp tongue is a promising step. In the meantime: don’t shoot the delivery boy.